Tag: rental


Dec
2016

Trying out Pergo XP in the Rental

categories: Renovation

On our latest rental project, we decided to go with Pergo XP flooring from Home Depot for the bedrooms, living/dining areas and hallway. It’s a wood laminate floating floor.  We were just tired of replacing carpet every time someone moves out and hoping this will last a little longer.

Floor color…
We chose the Warm Chestnut color in Pergo XP from Home Depot. We are going to go with Allure Ultra for the kitchen since it’s waterproof. We chose Sawcut Dakota and bought it online – it matches almost exactly the Warm Chestnut color in the Pergo XP so that worked out well. Deciding on the colors wasn’t easy (it never is).  The walls are a light greige color and the flooring seems to go well with it.

Floor leveling…
Our dilemma: there was carpeting in the living room and parkay flooring in the dining room. We planned to pull up the carpet, but leave the parkay in because it would’ve been a NIGHTMARE to pull up – that stuff is glued down solidly. So, we had a 5/8 inch difference in height between the two floors once the carpeting was pulled up. We were so indecisive about this – we went back and forth between trying to pull up the parkay, etc. Finally, we just decided to put some 5/8 inch plywood down in the living room. We already had two layers of plywood there, but oh well – what’s another layer?!?

And the current plywood is squeaky in spots which we tried to remedy but to no avail. Nothing seemed to get rid of the squeak. It’s an old building – people will just have to deal with a few squeaks – it adds character, right? 😉 People won’t be able to sneak around, eh?

Well, we researched a ton about how to add a layer of plywood to an existing layer of plywood and there are so many different ways it seemed. Some people glued the layers down then screwed them down and some people just nailed them down. It was dizzying for us because we tend to be on the indecisive side anyway.

My husband bought all the plywood and some leveler mix for the areas that were sloped a little downward and then we found out Home Depot was having a special on flooring install so we decided to go with them! Save us, please! :-p After all that work watching videos to do it ourselves and going back and forth! We had already laid half a room of flooring by ourselves, but the idea of someone else doing it and doing it much faster was too alluring.

Home Depot saves the day…
So, we scheduled with Home Depot three weeks out, but they called and told us they had an opening come up sooner on the weekend – yes! On enters a guy from Transylvania (well, from Chicago, but originally from Transylvania)! I’m not kidding! How cool is that?! I asked Bryon if he showed him his widow’s peak and said he was from Transylvania too. I’m sure that would’ve gone over well.:-p I’m always joking with Bryon that he’s a vampire because he has a severe widow’s peak and he has a machine in the bedroom where he hangs upside down to help his back.  :-p  Anyway, hope I didn’t offend anyone who’s from Transylvania – bad vampire joke!  This guy finished the entire flooring project in one day!!!!!

He says we don’t need to level the areas that are sloped (we were going to use the leveler mix for this) because the flooring is very thick and forgiving. I hope he’s right! It wasn’t sloped by much – maybe 1/2 inch and only in some spots. Then, on the side that had the carpet, he just cut up the plywood and stapled it to the existing subfloor and boom! It’s level! I’m in shock when Bryon tells me this because we have seriously been going back and forth on this for 3 months by that point! We were getting other stuff accomplished in the mean time, of course (hanging doors).

He put transition strips down at the bedrooms because those were a different level, but that was the plan from the beginning. We also thought we were going to have to have transition strips at the hallway but the guy thought it was level enough to go straight across. Woohoo! It looks so much better without transition strips.  It was pretty level and the hallway had a slope to it but you can’t even tell! The hallway was a little crooked so he had to adjust the flooring accordingly. We love it – he did great work and can’t beat getting that all done in just one day – some things are just worth the extra money..

Here’s some pictures:

Here’s the transition between the Allure Ultra (kitchen side) and the Pergo XP (dining room side).  You can hardly tell the difference right?  I think next time we may do Allure Ultra everywhere instead of Pergo XP because it seems to be slightly more durable.


Jul
2016

Best Flooring For Rental Houses (Our Experience)

categories: Renovation

Isn’t it hard to choose flooring for houses, let alone rental houses?  All you can imagine is how they are going to take a key to it, let their dog pee on it, or burn a cigarette into it (no, they aren’t supposed to smoke). Sometimes, after seeing a house upon tenant move out, I like to try to reconstruct how certain things happened like in a crime scene. How on Earth does something like this happen is all I can think sometimes?

Though most tenants are good – you tend to keep the worst-case scenarios at the forefront of your mind when updating a unit. And it makes you wish they made everything out of stainless steel or concrete though nothing is truly indestructible for some people.

On one hand, you don’t want to spend too much because you will not get it back for years to come.  On the other hand, you don’t want to have to keep replacing the flooring every couple of years or even every year.  What to do?!

We’ve been experimenting with different flooring for some time and we’ve had some luck with vinyl plank flooring, wood laminate flooring, and even carpeting (on stairs).  Our favorite pick: Allure Ultra or similar vinyl plank flooring.  But here’s our review of all the options that we’ve tried.

Stairs:
Stairs are tricky b/c it’s expensive to put laminate on stairs and even Allure on stairs is expensive so we feel like carpet is the best bet b/c it’s cheap and if you need to you can replace it pretty easily and inexpensively. If you really have a high traffic stairwell like we do in the back our four-plex building, then sheet vinyl plus rubber treads has worked well for us – it’s a nice look and easy to clean. You can see pictures of that in a post under Rentals.

Allure peel and stick (the planks stick to each other not the floor so it’s still a floating floor):
We are not great fans of this though it’s less expensive. We used this in a living room and in a basement area. The cracks between the planks can tend to separate and get dirt stuck in there in places and it’s not truly waterproof due to this (they don’t advertise that it’s waterproof though). Maybe it was just because it was my husband’s first time installing it or maybe that’s just the way it is. I’m not sure – but I’m not a fan. It held up through one tenant with no scratches or anything, but I just get annoyed about the cracks between the planks in some places are more visible than they should be in my opinion.

Vinyl plank click-lock flooring – Allure Ultra brand (winner):
The interlocking Allure Ultra is truly waterproof and we haven’t seen any separating after years of use in a high traffic hallway. The only downside to it is that it’s tricky to install and quite the learning curve b/c it’s flexible vinyl planks that interlock which as you can imagine can be tricky vs rigid planks that interlock. The plus side is that you can cut it easily with a box cutter so you don’t have to have any special equipment or make a whole lot of extra noise. We have more recently had this installed in a kitchen and the installer said that it is way easier to install now – they’ve made improvements in the design.  They’ve also made improvements in the look.  Even more recently than that, we’ve installed a brand from Lumber Liquidators that was even thicker – Farmland Hickory Engineered Vinyl Plank flooring 7mm thick.  For a more upscale look, buy the thicker vinyl plank.  It makes a big difference and looks more wood like.  They now sell the thicker vinyl plank flooring at Home Depot as well.  It’s still waterproof and scratch-resistant, etc.

Wood laminate (comes in second and looks nicer):
Another thing we tried in bedrooms is wood laminate floating floor. We used some relatively cheap laminate we got off the shelves at Home Depot for some bedrooms and that held up really well through one tenant’s use – no scratches, stains, or separating between the planks or anything wrong. But it didn’t look as wood like as the more expensive stuff.  After that, we have tried a more upgraded laminate for a different unit – Pergo XP – and that has held up well as well but looks alot more upscale than the more inexpensive stuff. See this post: Trying out Pergo XP in the Rental

As you can see, carpet isn’t listed – well, except for stairs.  We haven’t had the best luck with carpet – it always seems to need to be replaced and even if we keep it, we have to spend so much time cleaning it that I’m not sure it’s worth it.  Anybody else want to share their experiences on what has worked for them?  I’m always looking out for cheaper alternatives that are still durable.